


igne natura renovatur integra

by seraf



Series: carthago delenda est [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: ? - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Cult of the Lightless Flame (The Magnus Archives), Fire, Gen, Revenge, Self-Harm, but mike's time w them is important to this fic, desolation mike!, in the sense that. he sets himself on fire., so im putting it in here just in case, this isn't canon to this series/mike's time in the desolation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25075795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: ( through fire, nature is reborn whole )mike crew takes a slightly different path, makes a slightly different decision. what is more important, revenge or freedom?  it's a simple matter of a different answer to that question.
Relationships: Michael "Mike" Crew & Jude Perry
Series: carthago delenda est [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1694476
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	igne natura renovatur integra

jude seems to know his decision even before he does. he’s lying awake, restless and burning, cheeks tinged a deep red from the heat curling inside of him these days. ( he thought it was just from the outside, from standing too close to where they’d burned a house down, cheeks holding that heat inside of them, but he stood under the icy stream of water for almost an hour, and the heat still clings to his skin. ) 

when he opens the door to go out and smoke, she’s setting the containers of petrol next to the stairs. ‘ just in case you make up your mind, ‘ she says, with a smirk like she knows the answer. 

he doesn’t have the right words for it, but he’s thinking about phoenixes, as he sits on the steps outside his door and smokes. about the idea of rebirth through fire. 

he thinks about everything his body has been torn through, all the things out of its control - the horrible fractalled bones and tissue, the scar marring his face, the places where his skin has _rotted,_ the way even the flesh couldn’t make his body a place he wanted to stay. 

he thinks about _hurting_ it, about holding down the lichtenberg figure and forcing it to feel its own searing-hot pain, a horrible, destructive heat that burns and binds it, and it fills his chest with such a vicious satisfaction that his ribs ache. 

the petrol sits there for another three days before he _truly_ makes his decision. 

he’s always been able to reach to it, if he really wanted to. showing more of that scar, an actual stormy night, his thoughts turning to it - all of those things mean it finds his scent all the faster. 

this time, however, with the first real thunder for years breaking over him, it finds him waiting for it, stripped to nothing but his underwear, skin slick with gasoline and eyes triumphant. he and the lichtenberg figure stand, for a moment, face to face. 

and then he drops the match. 

it’s _agonizing,_ of course it is, the way the fire immediately and almost _happily_ leaps through him to his bones, but he has spent night after night after night in searing, mind-rending electric-pain, and this feels like - this hurts _so much_ it turns the memory of that to ash, burning all those sleepless nights away from him, the smell of ozone, as he falls to his knees. 

he could let the lichtenberg figure go. he hears it screaming. he _feels_ the scorched earth - offer the possibility, almost. to destroy it completely. but a vicious feeling rises in his chest. 

it would give him no such mercy, and neither will he. 

_i am yours,_ he breathes, opening his mouth so the gasoline fumes pour down his throat, flames suffocating him from the inside out. and he _tugs,_ pulling his tormentor close to him as they burn together. he will allow it no such mercy. and so, as they burn, as he is _remade_ , he burns it into his skin. traps it, half-living and in an endless state of agony, in the heat that now flares in the heart of his very being. it will not die until _he_ does, and he will feed off of its endless pain forever. 

when he wakes, the scar that crosses his waxen body is coal-black, and the air smells like an electrical fire. the storm is still coming in, and he feels the raindrops hiss into steam long before they ever touch him. and he laughs, giddy and fevered in his freedom.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> must an au make sense? is it not enough to have michael crew, unhinged?


End file.
